After All These Years
by Mandy of the Amoeba
Summary: Hermione gets a letter from Harry twenty years down the road. Will he be what she expected?


A/N: Erm....this is just your typical reunion sort of fic. It's not very long, and not very good, but I wrote it anyway, and I figured that I might as well post it up. The opening part is a song lyric from "Falling" by Bruce Guthro. All characters except Mirinda, Dirinda, Mirella, and Cedric Potter belong to J.K. Rowling.  
  
  
  
_Hey, I will be in town tomorrow   
Could you meet me at the station?  
If it's just to see your face   
As the train pulls through.  
I just want to see you laugh or cry   
Or shake your head at me.  
I just want to see   
What twenty years has done to you.  
  
_  
Hermione read the note over again, trying to read between the lines somehow. The parchment it was written on was ratty, and the ink was blotchy, as if it was from a quill that had seen it's better days. When the owl first delivered it, she thought that someone was just playing a joke, and a cruel one, at that. But the handwriting was unmistakably Harry's.  
  
Tomorrow.....tomorrow was September first. The start of term for Hogwarts students. What did that mean, then? Did Harry have a child? Was that why he was going to be at the station? Of course he must have meant King's Crossing, he would have stated otherwise if he hadn't. Hundreds of questions swirled around in Hermione's mind. Had Harry gotten married? To whom? Why hadn't he let her know? Was he becoming a professor at Hogwarts? Maybe so, Harry had always been good with kids; he once said he would like teaching, and that could be why he was coming to the station....  
  
"Ron!" she called suddenly, getting up from the table and hurrying through the house.   
  
"Just a minute -- Yow!" she heard in response, and rolled her eyes. Hermione's redheaded husband had been working all morning, trying to install a telephone in their bedroom. He kept saying that they needed to keep up with the "modern" world, Muggle and wizarding....but he refused to hire an electrician.   
  
"Stop fiddling with that and listen to me!" Hermione demanded, her hands resting in fists on her hips. Rubbing a slight burn on his hand, Ron looked up at her, slightly annoyed.  
  
"I'm almost finish--"  
  
"I don't care, this is more important." she interrupted, holding out the note. "Look at this."   
  
His brown eyes widened as he read over the note, then looked up. "Harry? Tomorrow?"   
  
"Yes. I'm going with you to take the kids to the station.....speaking of which, you'd better go pick them up from the Burrow if they're going to get any sleep tonight." Hermione sighed, shaking her head. "I know your mother means well, Ron, but I swear, she gives them so many sweets! It ruins their teeth, and all that sugar keeps them bouncing off the walls all night!"   
  
"I'll talk to Mum." he replied, grinning as he kissed his wife's cheek. "But you know she won't listen to me. Be back in a while." Without another word, he handed the note back to her and apparated away.  
  
Hermione sat down on the edge of their bed, lost in thought. It had been a long twenty years. After Harry defeated the Dark Lord in his seventh year at Hogwarts, he sort of faded out of the limelight. She had heard rumors of how he'd sunk into depression, and a lot of other things that she just wouldn't believe it. Not Harry, not her best friend. He had too much pride to let himself go downhill.  
  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
  
At a quarter till eleven the next morning, Hermione and Ron stood with their three daughters at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, keeping their eyes peeled for the familiar head of messy black hair. "Ron, what if we don't recognize him?" Hermione said in a low voice, watching their two oldest girls, twins, greeting school friends.  
  
"Hermione....how many people do you know with a lightning shaped scar on their forehead?" Ron asked, giving her a skeptical look.   
  
"Oh....good point."  
  
"Mum?" a shy voice said. Hermione glanced down at her youngest daughter, Mirella, who would be going to Hogwarts for the first time. "That boy over there looks just like the one in pictures of you and dad at school."  
  
Following the young girl's gaze, both parents stared in shock at what met their eyes. A scrawny boy, about ten or eleven, stared back at them, his glasses lopsided and his black hair in disarray. "It's got to be Harry's boy.." Hermione whispered, shaking her head slightly in awe at the resemblance.  
  
"Look to his right." Ron replied, his voice sounding grim. As she did so, Hermione saw a man walking towards them. His eyes were sunken in, his hair was beginning to bald, and he held a lighted cigarette in his hand. He didn't say anything as he came up to them, but he did give a faint smile.  
  
"Harry." Hermione said shakily, and managed to smile in return. They shook hands, and she had to stop herself from wincing at the sickly, clammy feeling of his skin.  
  
"Hey Hermione, Ron." the man answered, nodding to each of them in turn. Ron just glared at him, pink blotches of anger appearing in his cheeks.  
  
"Mirella, go find Dirinda and Mirinda. Tell them the train's about ready to leave." the redhead ordered sharply. As the girl left, he turned on Harry. "Where have you been?" he hissed. "You just run out on us right after graduation, then come back twenty years later out of the blue!" Although most people would have thought Ron was just plain furious, Hermione knew he was upset by the tears shining in his eyes.  
  
"Nice to see you, too." Harry replied. There was a short silence as Ron clenched and unclenched his fists.  
  
"That's a very handsome little boy you have there, Harry." Hermione said brightly, not giving her husband a chance to say anything else. Harry nodded, glancing over his shoulder.  
  
"He's a good kid. Called him Cedric..." Harry laughed slightly. "Kinda funny to name your kid after your wife's old boyfriend, but that's the way Cho wanted it, and I guess it's fitting."  
  
"How is Cho?" Hermione asked politely.  
  
"She's dead."  
  
There was an awkward silence, and Ron finally stopped flexing his fists. Hermione studied the face before her; Harry didn't even flinch when talking about his dead wife. In fact, he hadn't shown hardly any emotion since he first walked over.  
  
The train whistle blew loudly. "Guess I better go see Cedric off." Harry said. He shook Hermione's hand again, then turned to Ron. The two men regarded each other for a moment, neither one knowing exactly how to apologize after twenty years. It was Ron who spoke first.  
  
"Hey, don't be a stranger. You know Mum would love to have you over for dinner sometime." he said. Harry nodded silently in response. Suddenly, he hugged Ron, only for a moment, then pulled back and walked away without looking back.  
  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
  
Back at their own home, Hermione looked over at Ron as he sat reading the Daily Prophet. Neither of them had spoken one word about Harry since leaving the station, and it was starting to annoy her.  
  
"Do you think we'll ever see him again?" she asked suddenly. Ron didn't put down the paper.  
  
"Probably not."  
  
  



End file.
